Critics say 'Monkeypox' is a racist name – But it's not going away anytime soon

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3 points·Trouble_007··6 comments

I'm waiting for "everyone must wear a condom at all times to show how much they care about society." Pandemic performative gestures are far more important than actually telling people how they might avoid infection.

If it originated from monkeys, then I guess it's at least consistent with other things like avian influenza. Probably too late and entrenched in the public consciousness now, too. I've seen a surprising amount of anti-gay comments in relation to monkeypox however which is not reassuring.

Probably "simian pox" would be more consistent with "avian influenza" given the shared Latin roots of both "simian" and "avian."

A closer parallel would be "cowpox".

The idea that referring to monkeys is racist is 1) nonsensical 2) racist.

When did the world became so sensitive? I know I might be downvoted but c'mon! If someone sane can think 'Monkeypox' is a racist name then it's game over.

I have watched a lot of people on Quora ask variants of "can white people get monkeypox?", usually from accounts with a lot of other dog-whistle racism and/or posted directly to explicitly racist sub-groups.

That doesn't make the name itself racist. It just presents a lot of opportunities for racists to be racist. As if they really needed one, but they're always seeking out new ones.

There's really nothing to be done about it. It just sucks. About the best one can hope for is that if you hear it being used that way, you can say, "Dude, don't be an asshole." Which is actually kind of a lot.

If you don't hear it used that way, awesome. But it is a thing that happens.

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